A Hunger for Adventure
by JTheGoblinKing
Summary: A Labyrinth / The Hunger cross over fan fiction.


Disclaimer: The following is an old Labyrinth fan fiction I wrote for a Labyrinth fan fiction group years. Labyrinth belongs to Henson. Most, if not all, of the Labyrinth fan fiction I am going to post here is at least ten years old, if not older. You will see the original dates they were written placed into these documents. These fan fictions predate the canon of Return to Labyrinth.

To: ,

Subject: [labfic] A Hunger for Adventure (1 of 2) REVISED

From:

Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 21:48:24 EST

I revised this story because I had accidentally posted it while it

was still full of errors and mild inconsistancies. Here is a slightly better

version. No change to the actual story, just the errors and a few wording

changes.

Title: A hunger for Adventure

Labyrinth / The Hunger fan fiction

Disclaimer: Labyrinth is owned by The Henson corporation. The Hunger is

copyright 1981 by Whitley Strieber- adapted into a movie in 1983, character

John Blaylock portrayed by David Bowie.

Brief summary of The Hunger: For those who have never read The Hunger or

seen the movie, The Hunger tells the story of Miriam and John Blaylock. John is

the two-hundred-year-old fledgling of Miriam Blaylock, an ancient Vampiress.

Special powers: A vague and limited ability to read minds, strength, speed,

immunity to disease and able to see well in the dark. Unlike many modern

vampire stories, Miriam and her fledglings are able to walk about in the day light.

They have to feed about once a week and sleep roughly six hours a day.

Like with my old The man who fell to Earth cross-overs which

can be found in the Labyrinth fan fiction archive, I'm going to merge the novel

with the movie.

Fan fiction summary: What happens when a Goblin King comes across a vampire

who physically resembles himself. (Not exactly comedic though this could have

been a good basis for a comedy. My Bowie Personas meeting comedies can be

found at the Labyrinth fan fiction archive.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A hunger for Adventure

He stood on the street corner patiently waiting for her to

emerge. His blonde bangs fell into his slightly mismatched blue eyes, the left

pupil larger and the eye itself seemingly darker than the right. He was slender

and fairly young looking, roughly thirty-six-years-old in appearance and

though he'd tell you he was thirty if you asked him- he was really was much older

than that. Thirty-six had been his age at the time of his death. He stood

about five feet, ten inches tall and could pass for an ordinary man.

Jonathan Hadley Blaylock, husband of Miriam, heir of Hadley

estate, attendant of two years of Ballio collage, a lordling, a British-American

immigrant, a music teacher who played the cello and a two-hundred and

seventy-year-old vampire...

The hunger stirred inside of him like a whirlwind in his

stomach. His blood was demanding satisfaction, pulling him to make the kill. A

small rodent gnawing away at his stomach. He had to feed about once a week as

surely as he needed to sleep at least six hours every day and when in that

sleep nothing could rouse him. The rejuvenating sleep is the most dangerous part

of being a vampire because it's when the vampire is most vulnerable. It was

when his body processed the digested blood into energy and when nothing was

supposed to be able to rouse him but strangely he had been having difficulty

sleeping lately- which didn't seem natural to him. And he had been dreaming- he

had never dreamed before until recently- dreaming of the past, of the night

Miriam made him...

John (as he preferred to be called) clutched at the gold thing

dangling at his chest. It was an ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol of

immortality. Miriam often claimed she was Egyptian but she was Anglo-Saxon, she must

have been. She had light blonde hair, and piercing, cat-like eyes with a

French accent.

The Ankh resembled a cross but the top part of it was a loop

over the arms. He hooked his thin finger into the loop. With a good sharp tug

the loop would act as a holder, the arms as finger guard as a steel dagger's

blade would unsheathe itself from the gold body of the cross.

He saw her, a tender young thing of twenty-five, standing

on the street corner, waiting for her ride. Her long brown hair flowing down

her back. She wore blue jeans and was waiting to go home to make dinner for

her eleven-year-old half-brother, Toby. She wouldn't be missed by too many

people. Just another young woman to disappear in the night. Blood was blood but

the younger the blood, the better the taste, the more rejuvenated he'd feel.

Blood was the life, it made him feel alive.

And how he ached to feel the physical struggle in his arms,

though that part of it always made him shudder, privately. To taste the hot

blood as it poured down his throat, the throbbing of the heartbeat within his ears

as the blood roared into him, hot, salty, nearly steaming and thick- full of

life and full of flavour. He nearly moaned with desire at the ache for it.

John wanted this to be a quick kill. He never liked to inflict

suffering. Miriam had once told him that there is no such thing as a kill

without suffering. The idea of the victim struggling for life both tantalized

and revolted him. But there was no way to be gentle about it, no way to do it

without causing fear and pain in the process.

He shuddered to think about it but sometimes he thought he

saw them- the faces of his long dead victims as he wandered the crowds at

night. He'd see a woman he just killed standing on a bus stop or in a train

station and he'd run away from there quite fast. Miriam had told him that there is

no way to touch the dead but he was certain he could. Touching was their

word for telepathically connecting. And his victims liked to haunt him.

Once he had gone to feed on a self-proclaimed medium in the

mid-nineteenth century, the exact date was obscure to him now.

And as he sat down across from her at the table he screamed as

the faces of his victims took form before the woman's face like the vague

projections of an old movie reel being shown against her flesh. He had fled from

there. When her body was found it appeared that her heart had simply given out.

But none of this was enough to make him stop killing. He had no

desire to find out what might happen if he stopped feeding. It was an

addiction and necessity. If he stopped he suspected that without the life-giving

blood he might slip into a sleep state, too weak to move, too weak to do

anything, a place between life and death of which only blood could bring him back.

And he had no desire to exist like that, nor to die either. He wanted to live.

He was supposed to live forever!

John could bear the waiting and hunger not a moment more. He

tugged at the hidden ankh dagger, unsheathing the blade, discretely as he

walked toward his lone victim. He was so intent on her that he'd have never

noticed the white barn owl perched on the tree branch, watching, watching and

waiting...

John stepped up behind the young woman and grabbed a hold of

her hair, tugging it to expose her throat. He dreaded this part of the game,

as he wrapped his arm around her head and placed his hand firmly over her mouth

to muffle her scream. That's when the fluttering of owl wings could be heard.

Talons, like iron hooks, rammed toward the vampire's eyes.

John staggered back, flailing his arms over his face to shield himself,

forgetting his prey. The woman was too scared to linger and let her mind comprehend

what had just happened, she fled into the night...

The scent of human blood faded from the scene but a strange,

dim, humming sound lingered that John's preternaturally keen ears could hear

quite well. The owl fluttered before him and he meant to reach out and strangle

the bird but it began to change form.

To his surprise a figure now stood before John. Perhaps it was

just the hair and the heals of the leather boots but the figure seemed taller

than himself. Same eyes though, same facial features.

Jareth's hair was blonde, feathered and spiked and teased. He

wore a white poet's blouse and light blue leggings. He wore black, leather, form

fitting gloves over his slender hands. From his neck hung his cicle pendant,

a triangle like shape with the two bottom points stretched and then curved

inward. This was silver. In the centre of the cicle was a gold coin with an

Ancient Celtic design upon it similar to the symbols of yin-yang or infinity,

perhaps some strange merging of the two.

Jareth stared down the vampire, who though handsome, had earned

The Goblin King's contempt.

The vampire was dressed in casual street clothes, plain dark

trousers, a long trench coat over a white button up shirt. And the glint of the

ankh, half-unsheathed because it had fallen back when John was attacked by the

owl, was half hidden under John's jacket.

John took a decisive step back from the powerful being. He

knew power when he sensed it.

'Oh, you've made a mistake, my blood sucking little friend!'

Jareth grabbed a hold of John by his throat and lifted him up into the air so

that his feet dangled and kicked for solid ground.

John gasped and grabbed a hold of Jareth's wrist. Perhaps

he could fight this attacker off if only he had fed first, but for now he was

starving and that equated weakness.

'Let me go!' John screamed.

'You went after the wrong girl!' Jareth said. 'There's no way I'm

EVER letting YOU go!'

John looked down to see the strange sight of a glittering mist

rising around them. Terrified he cried out for his wife, Miriam, believing that

she would somehow hear him and coem to his rescue. 'MIRIAM!' He screamed.

'MIRIAM!'

As the mist faded John realized they were indoors. And it was

day light. John felt himself drop to the ground with a heavy thud. He looked

around, with a slack jawed expression of confusion. Strange, and hideous

little creatures were gawking at him. One or two were laughing. Some had black

feathers and beaks, others had pig snouts and dog ears, stout and quasi-human

in appearance they spelt of rotted banana peals, rancid meat, sour milk and

swamp water.

John nearly swooned from the stench. The man who grabbed him

didn't smell like these things! The man who grabbed him had a human-like scent

to him, if only slightly sweeter. He was curious about what such a creature

might taste like.

Picking up on the vampire's thoughts Jareth gritted his teeth

and knelt down just long enough to smack the dazed vampire across the face.

'You're mine now!' He said. 'I decide your fate. Think of me in such a way

again and I'll decapitate you. Let's see how immortal you are without your

head! I am your master now. I am Jareth, The Goblin King.'

'The Goblin King?' John asked. He recalled old stories from

childhood and beyond, such tales as The Princess and the goblins, old Irish

legends of a goblin who could turn into animals at will, and later Charles Dickens'

short story, The Goblins who stole a Sexton and Christina Rosetti's The

Goblin Market. He scrambled backward, like a crab in the way he crawled across

the throne room floor. 'No, it's not possible!'

Jareth folded his arms over his chest. 'Believe it.'

John climbed to his feet. 'I've heard of you.' Yes, he believed

it. He really had very little choice but to believe it. There was little

else that could explain what was going on. 'I've heard of you. Yes, I've read

the stories.' He pointed an accusing finger at Jareth. 'You can't keep me

here. I have to be wished away first!' He said in triumph as if he had just won

a challenge.

Jareth smirked. 'I can't take a living soul unless they are

wished away or are attempting to retrieve someone they wished away- or if they

willingly accompany me here. But I'd like you to acknowledge my first few

words. I can't take a living soul. You, by technical definition, are not alive.'

His smile broadened. 'You should never have tried to feed from her, John.

That was your undoing.'

John was frightened. 'I didn't know she was yours! Do you

expect a tiger to be particular about the gazelle it strikes down?'

'You are not a tiger. You are a willful, walking leach. You

are a man who sold his soul for an eternity of taking lives.'

'You'd think someone who turns people into mindless... beasts

would understand.'

'There's a difference between you and I, John.' Jareth said.

'I inherited this title against my will. I do what is expected of me, what I

am obligated to do. You- everything you have ever done has been for your own

shallow wants.'

'I'm not going to stand here to be judged by a man who drives

people mad with an elaborate death trap!' He knew about The Labyrinth too.

John turned around, saw an open door way and decided to try to

make a run for it. He ran for the doors but as he did they slammed shut

against him. He grabbed a hold of the door knobs and turned them this way and

that, the door would not open.

He saw Jareth's shadow behind him and then he felt the gloved

hand grab at his hair and tore him away from the door way.

'Let me go!' John demanded as he struggled against Jareth,

using his fingers like claws. 'I didn't know she was yours! I DIDN'T KNOW!'

'What's done is done.' Jareth said coolly.

John was dragged to the castle dungeon where he was locked

into a room with a heavy wooden door and stone walls. There was a small window

in the door of his cell which allowed for someone on the outside to look in on

him. The room was dank, damp and empty save for a pile of old straw in the

corner. There was a narrow window that allowed in a slit of day light.

John lay on the ground for a long time, the hunger eating

away at him, making him murderous. He had to feed. The hunger was getting the

better of him. He lay on the ground until he drifted off into sleep. When he

woke it was night time. The pale light of the full moon shown down through

the window and down upon him as he lay staring up at it. Is this what was to be

his fate? Starving and sealed away in a castle in some strange other world?

He thought of Miriam. He missed her. He wanted to be in their bed, held in

her arms...

It was hard to think clearly. All he could think about was the

food- blood. The hunger mad his thoughts into a drum beat- food, food, food,

food, food- blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood,

Blood, blood, blood, Blood, blood, blood, Blood, blood, blood, Blood, blood, blood,

Blood, blood, blood, Blood, blood, blood, Blood, blood, blood, Blood, blood,

blood, Blood, blood, blood, Blood, blood, blood, Blood, blood, blood, Blood,

blood, blood, Blood, blood, blood, Blood, ...

That's when John heard it, the rustle and the squeak, the

sound of life. A plump and greasy little rodent, a rat scurrying across the

floor. John leapt at it, like a cat. He slit it open with the dagger Jareth

hadn't thought to take from him and he drank down the meager amount of blood given

to him. But this was hardly satisfying. It would be like a few drops of a

sour juice for someone dying of thirst, or a single taste of a stale cookie for

someone who had been starving. It just wasn't enough.

John pulled himself to his feet and held to the stone wall for

support, he felt weak. He made his way to the room's door. He looked out the

window of the door and down at the lock to his cell. It was a simple lock,

not at all complicated. He knew how to pick it. John had been an expert at

picking locks for years, it made the hunt much easier- of course one always had

to make it look like robbery if there was too much of a struggle, and of

course burn the body. He and Miriam never left physical evidence. They always

burned the remains in the giant furnace under their house. The thought of the

remains wasn't even enough to diminish John's appetite. He held his ankh

dagger in his hand, still bloody from slitting open the rodent. He attempted to

wipe it off as best he could without getting the blood on his clothes- there

would be no telling when he could change his clothes again next.

And then he reached through the window of his cell's door. With

the tip of his blade in his hand he was just able to, by stretching, reach

the lock. John's face contorted with stress as he struggled to hear the right

noise, his ear against the thick wood of the door. He couldn't look at the

lock and do this at the same time, the opening in the door was just too small so

he had to guess at what he was doing from memory and by how the blade hit the

old iron of the lock.

The rusty old lock gave way, falling to the stone floor

was a clank as John carefully opened the door to his prison. He was free. He

placed the dagger back into the sheath and put the thin chain of the ankh

pendant back around his neck, he had it clasped loose behind his throat in such a

way that a sharp tug would cause it to come loose.

He saw one goblin, about four feet tall holding a spear,

asleep beside the cell door. John frowned. Is that all Jareth had to guard him

with? Did he think he'd be so easy to hold? Wounded pride or not John was glad

to be free and he bolted up the turning staircase up from the dungeon.

Halfway up the stairs John found he had to pause to catch

his breath. He was dizzy. Something was wrong. He leaned up against the wall

of the staircase, trying to catch his breath. Something didn't feel right...

Why was he aching like this? It didn't seem to matter. The hunger was quite

strong. But as John looked down at his hands in the light of a torch that

was set in a small in-caved shelf in the wall he let out a gasp. It wasn't a

trick of the fire light. There were rough spots of skin on his hands that had

never been there before and... was that a liver spot? John couldn't move.

Jareth! Jareth had done this to him! What was happening?

A door at the top of the staircase out of the dungeon opened.

Jareth stood wearing a red velvet, long sleeved shirt, black leather gloves,

black leggings and leather boots. He walked down the stairs toward John.

'Well, it appears an ordinary cage won't be enough to hold you. Broken out of

your cell, I see.'

John stared at Jareth. 'YOU! What have you done to me?!'

Jareth narrowed his eyes at him, knowing already what was wrong.

'I haven't done anything to you. You're dying.'

'DYING?!'

'It's the result of your very birth to vampirism. Your maker,

Miriam, she never quite got the process right. She never told you? One day

you would deteriorate and she would lock you away in a casket in a secret place

where she stores all her botched off spring.'

John groaned in despair. He felt a heat rising in his eyes.

'That's not true! Miriam wouldn't...' If such was to be his fate she'd do the

merciful thing and throw him into the furnace and scatter the ashes, not seal

him away with his hunger to suffer forever for her own greed or mad collection.

But now he wasn't sure. He was trembling. 'Miriam loves me!'

'Miriam has already selected your replacement.' Jareth said cruelly.

The teenaged girl they had been teaching music. 'Alice.' John

said in a choked whisper. 'She means to...'

John crumpled to his knees right then and there and gave in to

crying. First to lose his freedom to The Goblin King, then to learn his wife

meant to replace him and seal him away forever, and finally that he would die

like this, that he would waste away- but it wasn't really death, was it? He'd

exist forever in that tormented condition and... and he probably deserved it!

He thought of all the lives he had taken, the promise of immortality and every

human life he took and now it seemed so petty, so awful. Miriam had lured

him into what he thought was immortality. She had promised him it would be

forever and ever.

'Forever and ever...' He muttered to himself. 'Forever and ever...

Oh, God!' He doubled over crying. A mixture of pain and rage swimming

within him. A part of him tried to convince himself that Jareth was lying, that

somehow Jareth must have poisoned the rat that had gotten into the dungeon,

knowing he'd feed on it. But something deep down inside of him knew Jareth was

telling the truth.

His heart sank, he was doomed.

Jareth frowned as he looked down at the pathetic wretch curled

at his feet. He could let John wither away, it was appropriate, wasn't it?

The proper end for such a miserable creature. But no. John was beautiful,

Jareth couldn't deny that, physically resembling himself. To watch John waste

away would be too much like watching himself wither away. Jareth just couldn't do

it. And besides that it would be a waste to have a vampire in his possession

only to let it wither away like a flower. And why do anything if he can't

profit from it?

Jareth knelt down next to him. 'You don't want this to happen

do you?' He asked softly.

John looked up at him. All he could do was nod.

'I can save you.' Jareth said. 'But you must agree to serve me

forever.'

'Yes, anything!' John was terrified to die. His victims were

waiting for him just beyond the veil, he could almost sense it.

Jareth smiled and took John's head in his arm, and with his

hand, lifted the edge of the leather glove of his right hand, revealing the

artery in his wrist. 'I'm not a vampire.' He reminded John. 'But there's

enough magick in my very blood to undo the flaw of your conception and restore you

to a proper vampire. Drink, and remember your promise. Drink and you'll be

mine forever...'

But John didn't care about the ominous nature of what

Jareth was saying, he grabbed him by his wrist, hastily, pulled it to his mouth

and tore open the fount. The blood roared into him. It was strange, electric

like and sweet, with only the vaguest familiarity of the salty taste of human

blood. A heart beat that would never stop, the strange hum of sound passing

into himself as he drank from the wound.

Jareth gritted his teeth and as John bit him he let out a hiss

of pain, the way one does after removing a bandage held with adhesive. How as

John's lips were pressed to the wound and the teeth had receded into the

vampire's mouth and there was just the suckling Jareth found himself stroking the

vampire's blonde hair with his free hand. 'You're mine now.' He said

softly, almost sweetly. 'You'll never be free.'

But John did not care.

To: ,

Subject: [labfic] A Hunger for Adventure (2 of 2) REVISED

From:

Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 21:48:41 EST

This seemed to go on for a short eternity. When Jareth finally

pulled back he only seemed slightly weakened though John was sure he had taken

quite a bit of blood.

The hunger wasn't quite as bad and the youth had returned to the

flesh of his hands. John stood up. It looked as if he still meant to leave.

He had unfinished business. Miriam had meant to betray him and his love.

He had loved her before all others, she was the only one he had ever loved.

And he would make her pay for it. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He had

lovers before, whores mostly. But there had been a servant girl once but nothing

came of it... In any event Miriam had been his wife for over

two-hundred-years and she had betrayed his love the night she made him!

'Not so fast,' Jareth said as he climbed to his feet, 'we have

a deal. You cannot retract on it.' Jareth held out his hand and a metallic

looking thing took shape. It folded like cloth but it looked like silver, a

strangely light weight silver dog's collar!

John stepped back and raised his hands, tried to protest but

Jareth was quicker than him and the collar was soon fastened and locked

around his throat.

John tugged at the thing in a futile struggle to pull it off,

a clear mark of enslavement.

'You'll never get it off.' Jareth said in a tone that seemed to

mock the vampire's frustration.

'You made a deal, remember. You're mine now. That's just to

ensure you keep the deal. You, from this moment forward, are entirely

dependent upon my whim. You'll feed only when I allow it, you'll do as I tell you.

If you try to feed on anyone without my allowing it, the collar will stop you.

If you try to disobey me, the same. You're mine, John. Escape is

impossible unless you wish to starve.' His laugh was cold and vicious. Jareth had

not forgotten whom it was John had tried to attack on the street, tried to

attack and kill!

John's gratitude at being saved from certain doom was lost.

He raised his hands as if he meant to strangle The Goblin King and he lunged

at Jareth. 'Damn you!' He growled.

Jareth was still laughing as he fell backward with John on top

of him. 'You can't kill me.' Jareth laughed.

'You just watch me.'

'No, I mean, you CAN'T, in fact, you can't kill anyone.' And

then in a more demanding tone, 'Get off!'

John attempted to refuse but the collar seemed to tighten

at his throat. And then as if tugged by a powerfully strong yet invisible

leash he felt himself be flung backward. He landed on the stone staircase with

a small groan of pain.

Jareth smiled maliciously as he stepped up to the vampire.

'Now, are you going to behave?'

John glared up at Jareth and then looked down sadly. He had

no choice.

Even his lock picking skills couldn't remove the collar at

his throat. A collar that made even the most moronic creatures of The

Labyrinth laugh at him and point. He was aware that he had become Jareth's pet.

For the most part Jareth didn't ask much of him except when he

felt like humiliating him, on which occasions he might ask him to polish his

boots or sweep the throne room floor or even wax the floors of the vast castle

hallways.

He was fed at least. Once or twice he tried to feed on

the goblins and failed miserably only to have the collar cause him an intense

physical pain at the effort, a pain that seemed to have no origin but to

blindingly encase his entire being. Jareth told him a few times that he wouldn't

like goblin blood anyway, it was practically poison. The scent was quite awful

to John anyway.

What he was provided with was chicken and pig blood by the barrel

full from a butcher shoppe in The Goblin City. It was quite a bit of blood, but

it wasn't human. And how he resented Jareth for that. And Jareth always

took it upon himself to remind him, as he sat in his crescent shaped throne,

sprawled out like a lazy cat, with a dismissive gesture, that he should be

grateful he was so well cared for and he should try to do more to earn his keep

because his worth wasn't equal to the blood he was being given.'

Six hours out of the daylight hours John was allowed to sleep but

it was in a windowless room in the dungeon with a heavy steel door with no

opening that locked from the outside and had no internal mechanisms for John to

tinker with. He hurt his fingers to the point of bleeding from clawing at

that door but even if he could escape, where would he go? Jareth was right, if

he tried to flee he would starve to death. And the collar did have written in

small discrete letters on it's back 'Property of The Goblin King.' There was

no where he could run without it being known that he was owned, unless of

course he found his way back to Earth, back to modern New York City in which he

could claim it was just a fashion statement until he could find some mystical

means of removing the wretched thing.

John found himself going through withdrawal for human blood.

The desire to kill over powering him. Animal blood could only satisfy so much

of the vampiric instinct to hunt, to kill, the desire to hear the slowing heart

beat, the rich, fresh, oxygenated blood fresh from the source, the explosion

of thought from the minds of his victims... Oh, how he missed that!

He'd find himself curling into a fetal position and trembling

from cold on the hottest days or sweating from heat on a winter night. And how

he hated it when Jareth would find him like that, feverish and lusting and mad

with the desire to kill.

It took over a year for that to stop happening for him to be

satisfied by the blood given to him. He'd dunk an old clay bowl into the vat of

blood he was given (which would only stay fresh for so long so he had to drink

it quickly.) even Jareth's magick couldn't do what modern preservatives

might have done better. And he'd drink the blood from the bowl as if it were

broth. It always was a little too cold, a little foul from not being fresh from

the source but it was better than nothing.

And as his addiction to the human kill dimmed something else

was happening to John, something all together strange. It was as if his old

human soul, a sense of self that had died with his first kill, was returning

to him. An unfamiliar sense of horror that came with death, as he had come so

close to a fate worse than death, a place between life and death where he

feared the souls of his victims might be able to exact their revenge. It was a

sense of his own humanness which was buried deep down inside. He hadn't been

all that great of a man when he was alive, a womanizing and selfish brat,

shallow and decadent, who laughed and mocked music he found to be sentimental and

saccharine and being unappreciative of the things that made life worthwhile.

Now he found himself appreciating the strangest things since

the obsession with the hunt had slowly seeped away. He came to respect and

even miss human life, besides his freedom, to lament the fact that Miriam had

tempted him into darkness. But he still wanted his eternal youth. He was

deathly afraid of growing old and of dying.

He found new passions which he had taken for granted before, a

liking of music, and appreciation for the warmth of the sun and light of the

moon instead of just lurking to this shadows where he was forced to spend a

good part of the day. He had, to say the least, been humbled. And sometimes

this upset him that he couldn't really recognize himself. And sometimes he wept

but other times he just didn't care or if he did he did not reveal it. In any

event, once the blood lust was gone, something of a human personality emerged

through the gloom. Is that how it was for all addicts? Not just a vampire

whose first and last thought of the day was of blood. Is this how it was for

mortal drug addicts and alcoholics? He felt a strange sort of sympathy now

which he never had before for homeless wretches he had seen on the street. He

had fed on many homeless addicts, the dregs of society people tended to ignore

and didn't care about. They were easy pickings, those sort of people. The

lower classes, the minorities. And now he was below all of them, a slave, a

piece of property- or as Jareth called him- a thing, corpse, leach, dead thing,

beast, slave, animal...

In spite of her betrayal and the theft of his humanity at the

temptation of immortality he sometimes missed Miriam, and wished for the

companionship of someone who would think of him as a man...

To say the least John was malcontent as a slave. Sometimes he

feared he was starting to suffer from Stockholm syndrome where he'd feel

worthless, like he wasn't doing enough to deserve Jareth's kindness, but then he'd

snap out of it and his contempt for The Goblin King would return.

One day, something exceedingly rare happened. As John sat

sulking in the corner of the throne room, where Jareth had allowed him to rest

between errands, he discovered that a young woman had wished away a baby

sibling. As the child slept soundly in a basket, wrapped in velvet blankets in

the throne room, the sister was racing through The Labyrinth.

Jareth was watching this through a crystal orb he held between

his gloved fingers. John could only vaguely see the image in the orb from where

he sat. He was at the wrong angle for a clear view of the three dimensional

image within the orb.

Jareth lowered the crystal and it faded from his hand like a

soap bubble dissolving instead of bursting. That never ceased to amaze John,

or maybe he was just looking for something that might amaze him.

'Leach!' Jareth called to John. 'Get over here. I have a job

for you.'

John felt the sharp tug of the collar at his throat but he did

not resist. It didn't hurt as much if he didn't resist. Five years in

Jareth's keep had taught him this. 'Yes?'

Jareth glared at him, that was not the popper response.

'Your Majesty...' John muttered.

'The girl is getting too far within my Labyrinth. I want you to

stop her.

John nodded and left the throne room quickly. He was just

glad it was a job that required he be allowed to leave the castle.

He was suffering from cabin fever, having months ago been

forbidden from leaving the castle, when he had tried to escape by climbing on

the roof of a horse drawn carriage of a courtier come to visit Jareth. He'd

have found some way to feed without killing, he'd have been free! But Jareth had

caught him.

John, by now looked very different from when he had first

come to the castle. He still kept his hair short, except for the long bangs.

But his button up white shirt had long ago become tattered and torn and now he

wore a shirt that tied in the front at the chest to the collar- something a

peasant might have worn in the dark ages. Black trousers and plain brown shoes.

He still wore the silver collar and his ankh necklace, which dangled under his

shirt. He was slightly thinner now from his diet of animal blood. His coat

was long gone too, torn up now, and transformed for use as a blanket on the

straw bed of his 'room' in the castle.

However now he had a brown, hooded cloak that Jareth had

given him for use in the winter. John wore this now as he headed out into the

Labyrinth. The cloak helped to at least partially hide the silver collar- the

mark of his defeat and humiliation- this symbol that he was nothing more than

a piece of property.

John easily raced through The Goblin City on foot and scaled

the high walls of The Labyrinth, leaping into the maze. His speed, strength

and agility made maneuvering through The Labyrinth fairly easy for him. He

picked up on the luctus scent of the young woman.

He eventually found her in the hedge maze of turning

passages of walls made of thick green bushes that rose up seven to eight feet high.

He was perched like a cat ready to pounce on a high brick wall at

the edge of this section of The Labyrinth as he watched her. The girl was

beautiful at nineteen. She wore spectacles which exaggerated the size of her

already large, green eyes. He found that quite lovely in a strange way.

Refreshing to see a set of eyes that were not those of a goblin or the mirror of his

own eyes in Jareth's face, which he was not allowed to look at directly.

Her brown hair was drawn up in a bun behind her head, and

little ringlets of curly brunette hair hung out at the edges of her face, giving

her an old fashioned look that he found most appealing. She resembled, greatly,

a servant girl who had been his lover in his youth. And for a moment he

thought this was the servant girl, come to haunt him like the ghosts he sometimes

saw of his victims. And this nearly jolted him into falling from his perch.

But no, this couldn't be her. For starters, he hadn't been a vampire yet when

he had loved that young woman so many years ago. He had been... yes, he had

been human.

A few goblins that were roaming the brick part of the Labyrinth

saw John on his perch on top of the wall that divided one part of The Labyrinth

from the next. They loved John. The fact was he resembled their master yet

they were allowed to do as they pleased to him without punishment. And this

thrilled them. The stones went flying at John's back as they laughed at the

sport of trying to knock him down.

John gave a startled cry as he lost his footing and fell

forward, landing right in front of the girl.

The girl let out a gasp and ran to the fallen man. She grabbed

a hold of John by his arm to help him to his feet. 'Are you hurt?'

Her eyes went wide when she noticed the physical similarities

between him and Jareth. But this wasn't Jareth. She could already tell. For

starters, this man was slightly younger looking and thinner, not to mention

his hair was short, he wore no make up, and his clothes- in spite of the cape

and the silver collar- were more mundane than Jareth's.

A brother maybe?

John was embarrassed and tried to shrug it off as he let her

help him to his feet. 'I'm fine. I'm fine. Damn goblins.' He grumbled as he

rubbed his back.

Now that he saw her up close, in spite of his keen vision,

she seemed all the more prettier and he liked the sound of her voice. It seemed

strange to him that she gave a damn about his falling. It had been a long

time since anyone even pretended to care about him. But there was something

sincere and innocent about this girl, something he found compelling, endearing.

'I'm John.' He said to her.

'Miranda.' She replied with a little brush. She found the

ragged looking stranger attractive somehow though he did look like a a younger

and shabbier version of Jareth. 'You... You wouldn't happen to know how to

get to the castle, would you?' She asked.

She was clever too, John noted, to have gotten so far in Jareth's

Labyrinth.

'It just so happens, I do.' John said slyly. He hooked his arm

to hers and walked with her. And they got to talking. His hood had fallen

back on his fall and he hadn't bothered to pull it up. She didn't ask too many

questions and those she did ask he was able to answer without giving away the

fact that he was a vampire or that he was Jareth's slave. There was no need in

scaring her.

He told her that he was from England, which technically

was true, and that he had been taken to The Labyrinth against his will which

was also true. And she told him that she was a musician from New York City.

She had a flat in Greenwich Village. She played the cello- that was John's

instrument and he boasted to her that he was one of the few people who could play

chopsticks on the cello, which made her laugh though it was an old line and

not very amusing.

He liked the girl. He couldn't help it. She invoked

something familiar, a memory of a lost life. And soon he wasn't just leading her

in circles, in fact, he was taking her toward the castle. He winced once or

twice as the collar caused a dim pain to grow within him. But it started to

grow. He let go of her and doubled over in pain. It felt like his very blood

was on fire, his stomach churning and in knots. It was like an iron dagger was

in his abdomen, the collar tight against his neck, electric-like pain coursing

through his whole body. He groaned in pain.

'What's wrong?' Miranda said. 'What's the matter?'

John tried to force himself to stand up but that's when he

realized Jareth had materialized before them.

Jareth's hands were on his hips. 'It seems to have become

a nasty habit that my servants start to betray me. John, do you remember the

command I gave you?'

John glared at Jareth. He had come to like Miranda.

She hadn't meant to wish away her sister, she had read the line from a book,

thinking it was fiction. He couldn't let Jareth destroy her life. 'Damn you!'

He said. 'You won't have her!'

Jareth was amused by this. It reminded him of how he

felt when John had attacked Sarah on the street. He smiled as he watched John

struggle against the pain to try to grab his throat. Jareth caught John by his

shoulders and shook him.* 'Look at yourself! Does she even know what you

are?'

'I don't care what he is!' Miranda protested. 'You're hurting

him!'

Jareth raised an eyebrow. 'Well, this is an interesting

surprise! You want my slave. Let's up the stakes. If you win, you may have him

and your sister back. If you fail, you and your sister are mine forever.'

And Jareth vanished with John back to the castle. To Jareth's

own amazement the girl did make it through The Labyrinth, perhaps because

John had told her some secret or another. In any event John was not punished for

it. In fact Jareth had commanded him to stand and his side when the girl

made it to the centre of The Escher Room. This room looked like a void in space,

crumbling staircases and archways and a hazy, red tinged sky.

'I've won.' The girl said. 'Let them go.'

'In deed you have.' Jareth said calmly. 'Your sister is

already safe and sound back in her crib at home. John...' *Jareth held his hand

up toward John's throat and the collar unfastened itself from John's throat and

made it to Jareth's hand where it dissolved.

But that couldn't be it. Jareth was not done yet. Jareth smiled

viciously. 'Aren't you hungry, John?'

John looked a little taken aback.

'No.' He insisted.

'Oh, really?' *Jareth said as he seemed to vanish and then

appear behind the girl. He tipped her head slightly so that John could see her

throat, the artery pounding underneath. 'Hasn't it been too long? Don't you

want a little taste. Think of it, John. Think of the heartbeat. Think of the

gush of hot, human blood. Don't you miss it? The flavour? The texture, the

taste, the explosion of thought and emotion as she dissolves into you...'

John was trembling with want. He moved toward her. His eyes

glazing over. He pulled her easily into his arms as he looked down at her

creamy throat.

Miranda was shaking. Now she knew what John was. It

didn't take a genius. He was a vampire! 'Please, don't...' She begged.

John heard her voice through the echoing darkness of the

hunger, the all consuming hunger, and it seemed to break through a beam of

light. John released her from his grip.

'What's this? Has my pet become some cheap byronic cliche!'

Jareth chuckled. 'The corny and redundant reluctant vampire. How positively

boring!'

'You have no power over me!' John said. But it was more

toward the hunger inside of himself than to Jareth.

Instantly the world around him seemed to fade.

'Miranda!' He called' MIRANDA!' It reminded him of how he had screamed out for

Miriam as Jareth took him but she hadn't come. He reached out for her, groped

for her in the void until he felt a small hand in his own and he held it tight

in the hazy mist of nothingness.

Suddenly he was standing in a room in a building in the

contemporary world! There was a television and electric lights! Was this

Miranda's flat? As he looked around in wonder he heard Miranda's voice and it caused

her to look down at her, standing in front of him, about a head shorter than

himself.

'You really are a vampire?' She asked as she reached up to

touch his cold face.

'Yes...' John admitted.

'And you kill people?'

John felt that quaking of that newly roused human soul. 'I

used to...' He said in a voice tinged with regret.

Miranda sensed the anguish of that statement. 'I can live

with that.'

John wrapped his arms around her and he felt the warmth of

her salty lips as they kissed.

Within the month he had obtained a forged passport and

he and his new bride left for London. As for Miriam, well, John never did

learn what happened to her. It seemed strange that a vampire should obtain a

Happily Ever After. But that's how it happened.

And once or twice he'd find himself speculating about

Jareth. Had it all been an elaborate plan to restore his lost soul or had Jareth

just been a mean spirited bastard? Maybe a little of both? It was always so

hard to tell with him...

The end


End file.
